Crying Over Spilled Milk: The Truth About Feeding Our Babies
By Galit Romanelli
Galit Romanelli is the founder of M.Other Milk, a platform for M.Others to find empowerment and community support in sharing their feeding stories. She has an MA in Gender Studies from University College London and a coaching certificate from Tel Aviv University. Galit currently lives in Jerusalem with her husband and two kids.
According to americanpregnancy.org, in the United States alone, approximately 70-80% of women will experience, at a minimum, the ‘baby blues’ and many will experience the more severe condition of postpartum depression or a related condition. Dr. Alison Stuebe found that women who reported struggles breastfeeding in the first weeks after giving birth had over 40% higher risk of developing postpartum depression (Bottled Up, Suzanne Barston, 2012).
These numbers come as no surprise to me.
Brene Brown talks about working towards shame resilience through contextualizing, normalizing and demystifying – by sharing our stories and our experiences surrounding all elements of motherhood we can move past feelings of shame that so many times rise through us.
For all these reasons and more, I’m here to share my story.
Growing up with siblings over a decade my junior, I remember both my mom and my step-mom breastfeeding. I grew up in a home where there weren’t many taboos, and we had many open conversations about body image, sex as well as birth and labor.
My mother shared with us about the challenges of labor, as well as the triumphs, and I just as clearly remember her cooing at my baby brother as she fed him at the breast. But never were challenges shared or even spoken of when it came to breastfeeding.
In hindsight, I think that is partially what contributed to my deep heartbreak and confusion when a harsh reality hit me: breastfeeding wasn’t as straight forward as “plug and play,” and milk did not necessarily flow in abundance…
I remember crying out in toe-curling pain as my baby latched on in the night, or crying in the shower because even running water was too painful for my cracked, sore nipples to bear. Pumping came with its own challenges and disappointments. I would spend so much time attached to the pump only to look down and see a measly amount. The frustration and disappointment tangled up with exhaustion and physical pain, left me feeling like I had already failed as a mother.
How could I possibly be a good mother if I couldn’t even feed my baby?
Overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, and failure consumed me. I felt that I couldn’t do the most basic thing as a mother – feed my baby. I felt so alone in my frustration and shame, but the more I shared my story the more I felt supported and seen. Because the truth is: I wasn’t alone.
This is why I started M.Other Milk, a platform for M.Others to find empowerment and community support in sharing their feeding stories. To raise the curtain on the darker moments and challenges that moms weren't talking about, because there is healing power in sharing our stories.
Just as every birth is completely different and unique, so is every mother’s feeding story. There is no room for judgment — for right or wrong.
This is why I work to help new moms transition into motherhood and fight the shame that so often accompanies the feeding journey by encouraging meaningful conversations.
3 Tips for Creating Safe Spaces For Sharing
Make it personal.
Share from your personal experience, with no expectations for your fellow M.Other to share her story.
Active, not reactive listening.
There’s no need to fix or give advice. Just be there.
Judgment is not invited to this conversation.
4 Tips for Normalizing The Conversation
You aren’t alone in your struggles and challenges.
Don’t be ashamed to share, you may be surprised what you’ll learn.
There is no right or wrong in this conversation.
Appreciate that we are different.
We all have different experiences, interpretations and make different choices.
Respect all choices.
3 Ways To Connect With Other Mothers
Ask “how are you?”
With genuine interest and love!
Acknowledge the power and sisterhood of motherhood.
Be each other’s champion.
We all need to hear that we’re doing a good job and the best we can.
At M.Other Milk, we believe that the conversation must expand. We strive to change the conversation from exclusive breastfeeding to inclusive feeding because we recognize that there are Many Other ways to feed your baby.
We need to support each other, and more importantly, by speaking up and out about the struggles, we shed light on all those M.Others who feel alone, ashamed, and in the dark.
Read more stories of M(Other)’s journeys and share your own at https://www.mothermilk.org/stories.